#facestab last cranked 2010-05-01 21:23

Valerie Plame Wilson silenced over CIA life bio by court order
posted by thelink at 2010-05-01 10:28

thelink: she claimed leak of her identity should allow her to break her oath of secrecy ... fair's fair? judges disagreed
thelink: her sekret ID was leaked as a natural consequence of her husband's [identifying himself as an agent working for CIA|], since there was an obvious and important conflict-of-interest in her using her husband's diplomatic status and sending him on a mission, which the public needed to know about once he went public himself
thelink: CIA should have [(a) found someone else to do the work after plame suggested the mission, OR (b) determined without plame's involvement that the mission was needed, and who to send] AND (c) acted appropriately on the resulting report, so that an op ed would not name names in NYT ...
thelink: her sekret ID was leaked as a natural consequence of her husband's identifying himself as an agent working for CIA, since there was an obvious and important conflict-of-interest in her using her husband's diplomatic status and sending him on a mission, which the public needed to know about once he went public himself
thelink: how it came about that plame was in the position where she felt she responsible to send her own husband on a mission hasn't seen much (any?) coverage, but is the crux of the issue ... was her compromising status used deliberately for us govt to pay lip-service to the idea of investigation, while achieving a report they could hush up or discredit?
thelink: or was this just a case of genuine-but-human conflict-of-interest causing mishap, which became one of the seeds for war?
thelink: there's been a lot of material generated on the issue, i haven't read much of it
thelink: would wilson's report have received more attention if it had not been commissioned by his wife? and how was it left to her to solve, via her hubbie, the question of the integrity of the claimed yellowcake purchase memo?
thelink: the investigation resulting from the furor over plame's ID being 'leaked', and FOI documents, provide interesting insight into workings of mysterious voodoo machine that is washington ... but i dunno if that key question is answered, or even asked
thelink:
thelink: source for image
thelink: niamey (niger) in pictures and stuff
thelink: summary of people/events
thelink: tangential, but perhaps more consequential, journalists spent time (eg 85 days) in jail over this story ... so much for free press
thelink: "Protection of journalistic sources is one of the basic conditions for press freedom...."
thelink: in 1972, US Supreme Court decided this was subservient to the right of grand juries to determine facts
thelink: in essence, turning american reporters into unpaid police
thelink: the previous link shows europe to have had more respect for the role of robust and vigorous debate enlightened by impartial investigation and reporting which underlies the spirit of free and open democracy, such as that supposedly installed by usa into 'rogue states' such as iraq
thelink: the branzburg 1972 case relates to crimes observed in commission by the reporter ... which presumably is what the plame case was essentially (the crime being revelation of a CIA secret agents identity) ... so perhaps the usa hasn't yet decided to trudge on reporters confidentiality wrt information about crimes ... ?
thelink: aka whistleblower protection
thelink: if i read this correctly, it looks like the government has been trying to get around the point of the protection by forbidding its employees from talking confidentially to journalists (actually, asking them to voluntarily release journalists from confidentiality agreements, but it's the same end result)
thelink: anyway, whistleblower protection is pretty useless if it doesn't work when the whistleblower is implicated in the crime ... that's usually how things are in conspiracies that people want to blow a whistle on
thelink: implying that reporters keep their sources confidential only for the good of the sources themselves is, likewise, a death knell for public access to information about anything much that they really should be making decisions about, via, you know, democracy ... remember that old thing?
thelink: i dunno about you, but i liek staying alive ... most other journalists i know feel the same
thelink: i find it scary to re-hash second-hand public information ... can't imagine how scary it would be to actually interview and publish firsthand for stories that matter ...
thelink: without respect for this role of journalists, we all live in north korea. time to do the rainbow mountain dance again, people. the dictator is looking despondent.
thelink: more related
thelink: defining journalists as only those writers who are successful capitalists likewise makes mockery of our rights as citizens to take part in democratic society
seti: Wilson's report wasn't commissioned by his wife, and it got ignored until Wilson wrote an op-ed in the NYT about it, and then it still got ignored. your conspiracy theories are DOA.
seti: Plame's identity was unlawfully leaked as revenge for Wilson not toeing the government's line on WMD in Iraq, there was nothing "natural" about it.

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